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Thus, when St Augustine came to Canterbury in 597 there was probably already a Christian cult at St Albans, not a hundred miles away. And there may well have been other such centres, if lesser ones, sustained by Britons who, even in areas not recently conquered by Angles or Saxons, may have been a majority of the population. Some areas in eastern or central England had, however, been but recently conquered or not yet conquered at all.

In considering Britain in 500 one has to weigh such fragments of information (or alleged information) as the annal in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (put together around 892) for 571AD. It says 'Cuthwulf fought against the Britons ... and captured four tunas, (centres of authority maybe equating to our Irish 'tuathas'): Limbury, Aylesbury, Bensington and Eynsham': this seems to relate to a wide area extending from west of Oxford to the neighbourhood of Luton, which was presumably in British hands in 500. Similarly, it is only thanks to a handful of fragments of information that we know that until the very early 7th century there was a British kingdom east of the Pennines, around Leeds. What went on in such kingdoms? They must have been Christian: so there must have been books and some learning. What remains of their books and learning? So far as we can tell: nothing. It is a fair guess (though not much more) that local structures of control and exploitation passed from one regime to its successor. Why do the two northern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia have British names? Could it have been that these are, particularly Bernicia, British kingdoms taken over in the 6th century by Anglian elites?
How far was - is - the population of what was to become England British (taking the term 'British' to mean 'the descendants of' people who had been there for a very long time')? The Anglo-Saxon incomers have left the best records. They buried goods with their dead and so we have many thousands of objects from their graves susceptible of, and receiving, sophisticated analysis. Furthermore, it was the Anglo-Saxon dynasties and elites who ultimately come out on top: so the bulk of what written records we have reflects views of the past which served them. What of those who, by origin, were the people who lived in Britain? In due, doubtless long, course, DNA analysis will provide answers, no doubt approximate and arguable, but still answers. So far as investigation has gone, it tends to suggest that the population of our island is largely descended from people who had been there for a long, long time.

It is certain that the Britons of the year 500 had already had successes on a European scale. Most significantly, the British church had been largely responsible for the conversion of Ireland. St Patrick was a Briton and, although his role in the conversion of' Ireland in the 5th century was not so extensive as later devotees maintained, nevertheless he was still important. (And his writings give unique glimpses of life in 5th century Britain.) Such a major British cleric as Gildas was later influential in Ireland: and the Irish church (by the 7th century the most learned in western Europe) was in large measure a British creation. British influence extended much further, most notably in the conquest of Brittany. Just when this took place and over how long a period is unclear; but it is reasonable to suppose that it was well advanced by AD 500. More remarkable still is that soon after the middle of the 6th century there was an apparently fairly extensive British settlement in Galicia, with a bishopric of its own: Sedes Britonorum.

Overall, though, our knowledge is fragmentary, and there are innumerable circumstances and wide areas of which we know next to nothing. A case in point is that of the Picts: the people inhabiting most of what is now Scotland north of the Forth. It may be that they were a subdivision of the Britons, though inscriptions show that they used one or more languages other than British. What is certain is that they were major predators on the lands to the south in the 4th century and afterwards and that they operated, at least partly, by sea. What their true nature was is a matter for little more than guesswork.

A visitor to the southern two-thirds of Britain in 500 would have seen evidence of great changes since Roman times, above all in the towns, largely depopulated and falling into ruins. On the other hand, much of the landscape and its layout were possibly what they had long been, and would remain.

There were new powerful Germanic elements in the south and east. Our visitor would have seen men and women whose appearance, clothes, accoutrements and weapons marked them out from the Britons. Yet even in the south and east, the Germans may have been outnumbered, perhaps far outnumbered, by Britons. The same could have still been true generations later, by which time more Germans had secured and settled in wider areas. If so, the native Britons must have been 'acculturated' in the long run: that would be why we speak English. (That some of us speak Welsh or Gaelic as well is a salutary reminder that Great Britain is a considerable island). Had our traveller gone to south-eastern Wales he would still have found significant use made of Latin. In other parts of Wales and in western Scotland he would have found Irish dynasties in power. Had he gone to eastern Scotland north of the Forth, he would have found - well, we would very much like to know what he would have found but it would certainly have included the Picts, perhaps mightily enriched by two centuries of successful pIunder.

The island was a patchwork of regimes and peoples. Some, even many, of the regimes were fairly recently established: but many of their subjects were probably living where their ancestors had been for a very long time. The question remains of how far possible continuities of population may have been accompanied by continuity of basic systems of government and agricultural exploitation. If the ordering of some of the landscape may have been pre-Roman, and the population's genetic inheritance as well, may not the basic systems of political organisation and economic exploitation have been equally old? Both in what was to become England and elsewhere in the island, much of what existed there in 500 may have been very old indeed, a foundation of' people and institutions, across which conquests and cultures had long flowed and ebbed. ENDS